6
The Head and Face

If you put people in your art, you need to pay extra attention to the placement and orientation of each person’s head. If there is a person in a picture, the most likely center of attention will be the head of that person. If there are many people in a picture, the head of one of them will likely be the center of attention, and the other heads will be secondary centers of attention. While this rule is not 100% true; it is generally the rule.

It is natural for us to look first at any face that appears in a picture. In life if we want to know how a person feels, we don’t look at his feet, we look at his face. Even small children train themselves to know when mom and dad are happy or angry by looking at their parents’ faces. Even small movements of an eyebrow or lips can have a major impact on conveyed feelings. Therefore, one of the first places we focus on when meeting someone in the real world is her face.